Systems and synthetic biology underpinning biotechnology

Biotechnology underpins modern society. Now knowledge-based and rational design and the control of biological systems are beginning to drive biotechnological applications. Academically, such approaches fall under systems biology, which works to quantitatively understand biochemical systems, and synthetic biology, which uses principles from systems biology and engineering to re-design and modify living cells. This issue of Current Opinion in Biotechnology reports on a selection of recent discoveries and technological developments from these two fields and explores their implications for novel biotechnological applications